The Midnight Hour
by Freddo
Summary: In the Year 2214, the Bolar Federation, R'Khells, and Technomugar form an unholy alliance to invade Earth. Can the crews of the Space Battleships Argo, Arizona, and North Carolina stop them and save Earth?


**THE MIDNIGHT HOUR**

A Star Blazers short tale

By Frederick P. "Freddo" Kopetz

Thanks to Gail Kopetz, Jamie Tucker, and "Yuki Wildstar" for support and ear-bending

**ACT ONE: SEVEN MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT**

**I. HOSTAGES**

**The Vicinity of Barnard's Star**

**Earth Space liner **_**Seal Beach**_

**May 26, 2214**

**1400 Hours: Earthtime**

Richie Hartcliffe was having a real problem.

He had recently turned seven, and his father, Clive, on leave, had been taking him on his second space cruise to see family at the Barnard's Star Colony. His mother Angie, he knew, was active again as a pilot, too. In fact, the last time he had seen his mother, he had been proud to see her in the uniform of the Black Tigers, about to embark on the _Argo_ as the Tigers' fourth squadron leader under the command of veterans Deke Wakefield, Cory Conroy, and Jonathan Hartnell-Wildstar. Rich liked all of them, especially Cory with his interesting accent, and Deke, with his California surfer twang and funny comments. And those funny drumsticks he was always hitting things with.

What happened there next was a tragedy.

Their ship, the space liner _Seal Beach_, had been ready to warp home from Barnard's when the ship and her two EDF escorts; two little space frigates, came to a complete halt.

Richie didn't know what had happened next, except that it happened in a hurry. Before long, the ship had filled up with Bad Guys in ugly dark-red and white uniforms. Most of them looked like normal Earth people; most Caucasian, with a smattering of black and red-tinged faces among their ranks; but some were obviously of Rikashan descent; they were orange, had greasy-looking hair, and spoke with the same nasty, abrupt accents that the other bad guys used.

Some of them were fat and very light blue in color, and some had ugly grey and red uniforms of a different cut than the majority of them. At first, Richie thought they were evil Gamilons turned renegade, but their accents sounded weirdly Bulgarian and they had weird laughs. He heard something that sounded like balalaika music and had heard one of them yelling at the guys in the red suits, stating, "We do this in the Name of the Warbringer for the joint glory of Bolar and R'Khell! PROSITSKIYA!"

The blue guys were yelling that word, "Prositskiya! Prositskiya!" over and over again. It sounded ugly to Richie's ears, and he knew he hated being tied up.

And, last of all, there were the other blue guys. Some were bald and had weird, ugly blue-on-blue eyes and black and red uniforms; and then, worst of all, there were men with blue skin taller than they were, all in black, with horrid faces that seemed to be blue skin over skulls. They looked hideous, were horribly strong, and their eyes literally glowed like coals. All of the other Bad Guys seemed to be afraid of them.

Richie was broken from his reverie by a slap in the face. He was tied up, so he could not raise his hands, but he looked up at an ugly blue face. "Who are you?" Richie demanded.

"Scum. It is I who should demand that of you, not you of I, you little worm!" yelled back the man with one of those heavy Bulgarian accents. "I am Colonel Petraska of Bolar, on duty with unit two of this slaver mission! You are all now slaves of the joint R'Khell Union and Bolar Federation, boy! You will obey all orders promptly, and you will not protest any of our orders or directives! That clear to you, little boy?"

"If I were free right now, I'd spit on you!"

"SILENCE!" yelled Petraska. "For that, you will face…"

Petraska began to pull out a hand-blaster, but one of the men in the red came up to him and said, "Colonel, I know you want to terrorize this lot, but we kill them on the schedule that the First Marshal established. One per hour until the Earth Federation meets our demands. One per hour _only_. This little creep is number nineteen on the list. Which means he is the nineteenth one we kill, preferably in front of his damned father, whom we have identified, unless Earth begins surrender proceedings and breaks off relations with Rikasha. And these orders come from both the First Marshal and He who is over him, and I, General Torgis Hamad, have the authority to make sure we carry them out, _aye!_ See the Vanguards watching us?"

"What are those…things?" Petraska whispered.

"The Apples of his Lordship's eye and the next step in human evolution; the New Technomugar," whispered Hamad. "They say He can see us through them. They say wherever there are two or three of them, He is with us. They are the Hands of the Dark Lord, his most terrible servants, shadows under his Great Shadow. I can't tell you more now…have to get back to my flagship. Do not mess this up, Petraska! I place _you_ in command!"

Petraska crossed his hands over his heart, bowed his head with closed eyes in the weird R'Khell salute, and then watched as Hamad took off with his black cape snapping behind him as he walked, adjusting his turban as he grinned like a madman.

"You, you, and _you_," said Petraska, signing to three guards. "Watch this little brat. He is in the line of those to be executed. Make sure he is watched."

"How do we do it?" said one of the R'Khell guards.

"I will have Heymik do it," said Petraska. "He is strong enough to cut off his head with one blow of the scimitar. "

"Of course," said one of the guards.

_Like hell you'll do this,_ thought Richie as tears formed in his eyes. _You just watch. My dad will get loose and start something, or Mom will show up with the rest of the Tigers._

Richie looked towards the stars as he thought, _Where is the Star Force?_

* * *

**II. BACK IN THE SOUP AGAIN**

**The Vicinity of Barnard's Star**

**Space Battleship _Argo_**

**May 26, 2214**

**1406 Hours: Earth time**

"Hey, Venture; this is hard to believe!" yelled Commander Paul Rosstowski as he sat in the _Argo's _Combat Station as her newly appointed Combat Group Leader.

"What's hard to believe?" snapped back Holly Venture from the helm. She had been home enjoying some well-earned leave when they had been called back into action just four hours ago. Their mission; get to Sirius to back up Task Force 16, which had been formed around the space battleship _Arizona _less than twenty-four hours ago. The _Argo _was the flagship of Task Force 15, and Holly remembered something from Commodore Wildstar's briefing that a Task Force 17 was being formed in the rear around Arcturus V around the space battleship _North Carolina _to serve as backup for their backup.

"It's hard to believe they're shooting at us!" laughed Rosstowski.

"Har, har, har, you're funny, Paulie," mocked Lieutenant Commander Venture, the spouse of the famous Captain Mark Venture, as she looked out at the green energy beams whizzing past the _Argo._ "Why is that so hard to believe?"

"Four hours ago, I was playing with my trains back home. Now…," said Rosstowski.

"We're not back home," said Admiral Derek Wildstar as he came up and slapped his hand against the back of Rosstowski's seat. "Why are we not firing back with the main guns yet?"

"Not in range, yet, sir," said Sasha Wakefield from the Cosmo-Radar. Nova was not there for this mission because she was back on Earth, since she had graduated from Medical School in 2212 and was now an MD, in the last few days of her Surgical Residency. Derek and she had reluctantly agreed that it was better that she didn't come out into space this time for this mission. Sasha continued with, "Give us about thirty seconds at twenty-seven space knots. Unless you want _me _to do something about this bunch?"

"Mrs. Wakefield, your powers are our backup. I don't even want the Dark Lord knowing you're here unless it is absolutely necessary," Wildstar replied

Lieutenant Chris Eager called out, "Third set o' enemy ships, right above us! They're droppin' space mines!"

A group of mines fell among the _Argo_ and her task force of two fleet cruisers, two patrol cruisers, and nine destroyers. One of the destroyers, known as the _Newark_, took a major hit, but she kept on firing her guns at the enemy.

"I wonder why those jackasses are keeping out of our range?" muttered Wildstar. "Sasha! Range to the enemy?"

"Eighteen megameters, sir. For whatever reason, they're keeping out of the range of the main guns!"

"Captain," said Sandor from his post. "I suggest we activate Measure Fifty-Five. We tested it in our trials last year. We can use it to get the Black Tigers on top of them before they know we have it."

"What is it?" asked Sasha. "I never heard of it before."

"Oh…I remember; Nova was on the ship last year in your slot between her Medical School classes in the summer war games, so you don't know what it is," said Derek. "It's code for something that Steve, Mrs. Sandor there," he said, indicating Diane Sandor, the chief engineer, sitting at her post in orange and white, "and Nova reverse-engineered from the Gamilons, with the last stages of it being with Desslok's assent after a lot of negotiations. It took us twelve years to finally get it to work right after we took some wreckage and plans off Desslok's flagship back in 2201 after we boarded her. Therefore, I suggest that now would be a good time for our real first battle test of Measure Fifty-Five. Rosstowski, order Hardy to take off!" Wildstar had forced himself to think before saying that, because Jefferson Hardy had been rotated back to command the Tigers again this cruise because Wakefield, who had been the squadron leader of the Tigers, had instead been transferred to act as the Squadron Leader of the Blue Devils on the spacecraft carrier _Shangri-La_, which was with the _North Carolina's_ Task Group.

"_Yessir!_" said Rosstowski. The _Argo_ fired her smokestack missiles at some Bolar destroyers that had come in above her, while two of the blisters in the keel had opened up, and the four new all-purpose heavy pulse laser mounts on the ship's keel above the Third Bridge were helping to ward off enemy fighters that were trying to hit the _Argo's_ keel with torpedoes. One had gotten through, and the aft part of the Third Bridge was smoking already from a small fire.

A moment later, Hardy's squadron was roaring out of the _Argo_, followed by Cory Conroy's squadron. "When we get in there, Conroy," Hardy said, "We're gonna be hittin' them like roaches comin' out of a hole. They won't be expectin' that. The first target is the enemy flagship; she looks like the old _B'eoneraze_ of the Rikasha Incident, except she's red instead a' black. We have to disable her DIATS Cannon ASAP. That's their equivalent of our Wave Motion Gun, except that it uses antimatter instead'a tachyons. Nasty stuff."

"How are we getting' there in time?" asked Cory.

"Measure Fifty-Five," said Hardy as they flew in front of the _Argo's_ bow and throttled down abruptly. "We practiced this stuff last year. Use belly thrusters, and make sure we're on line with the Second Bridge. Then we wait for the Cap'n's signal, and shut our eyes…"

"Captain!" said Sasha from her post. "Squadrons One and Two are lined up on Bridge Number two."

Derek nodded, and said to Sandor, "Blow explosive bolts. It's time we uncovered it. Mrs. Sandor, give me five percent energy charge to the circuit intercoolers."

"Five percent energy, ready," said Diane as she flicked some switches.

"Blowing bolts," said Sandor.

A number of bolts went off, and a light fairing was uncovered on a fairly small structure on the top of the _Argo's_ Second Bridge. The new structure was a hooded unit that had a glowing red energy grid at its center. The energy grid, which looked a bit like the multi-faceted eye of an insect, glowed with energy as some new circuits in the _Argo's_ systems began to come up…

Then, the Tigers sat waiting as Wildstar pulled a control grip out of a small access hatch at the Captain's station. He opened the electronic speaking tube mike at his post by hitting a button, and then, he held up the control grip, on its coiled cable, and hit a switch. He then barked, "Activate Measure Fifty-Five! ACTIVATE SMITE!"

The new reverse-engineered SMITE unit lit up, and Hardy and Conroy shut their eyes for a second as the concentric energy wave roared over their Tigers, making them vanish in flashes of blue-white light.

They reappeared a moment later over the R'Khell fleet flagship _L'Jarrnia_, coming in from out of nowhere as they flew in and began to strafe the enemy vessel, going after her bow first to disable her D'IATS cannon. Hardy grinned to himself. _We got them just in time, _he thought as he flew hard right to evade some pulse laser fire from the enemy ship. His missiles had gone up the firing gate of the enemy ship's weapon right as the dull green energy of its charging sequence had begun to light the thing up.

Hardy looked up, smiling as more Tigers were transported in via the new SMITE device. _There's Wakefield, and there's Angie Hartcliffe backing him up,_ thought Hardy, thinking back to last summer when, after testing the SMITE unit with many different kinds of robots flying the Tigers, he remembered that Nova had won an argument with Sandor, and she had consented to be the first human to be transported via the SMITE unit as a test pilot and volunteer guinea pig. Derek had _hated_ the idea! He also remembered how Nova had looked that day-sitting in the cockpit of a Tiger in her helmet…and flip-flops and a bikini; her body covered from head to toe with sensors, some wireless, others connected by wires to a small computer unit Nova had stuck in the aft place of the Tiger.

_If it wasn't for her flyin' ten missions and consenting to be monitored like crazy, we mighta never got this to work right. The lady had a tough job,_ he thought, remembering how Nova, nauseated from the tests, had made the last adjustments herself to the computers so you could fly a mission with that thing pushing you through subspace so you didn't come out of warp vomiting your guts out, or come out of it with a nosebleed, or come out of it whizzing on yourself (all of which had happened to poor Nova in the tests).

_I wonder if Nova's doin' any better than I am right now?_ Hardy thought as he dodged some enemy fire. _And what the heck is Dawn up to on the _North Carolina? _Good thing it was easy to get Lynn to watch the kids for a few days…or whatever…_

Hardy would find out the answer to those questions much sooner than he thought…

* * *

**III. A RESIDENT'S JOB IS NEVER DONE…**

**Earth**

**The Tokyo Megalopolis**

**The Wildstar Residence**

**May 26, 2214**

**1406 Hours: Earth time**

The alarm clock was going off again in Derek and Nova Wildstar's bedroom.

At this time, in the early afternoon, there was only one person in bed there, lying there in her underwear as the alarm clock bleeped. A hand came up from under the covers and its owner muttered, "uuuuuhnnnnggghhh" as a very messy-looking dark honey blonde mop of hair emerged from under the covers.

Someone was banging at the door.

"What time is this?" muttered a sleepy voice. "Worse, what day is this? I….oh…is Derek home yet? Not bloody likely," said Nova Wildstar as she got up, flexed on her toes, yawned, and opened the door to be faced with an angry-looking four year old girl with light brown hair.

"Anastasia," said Nova. "What are you doing home from pre-kindergarten?"

"Mommy, Jonathan brought me home," said Nova's second youngest daughter, born in late 2209 and usually referred to as "Anya." "Where's daddy?"

"Daddy left this morning at six; remember? Some kind of alert? We probably won't see Daddy again for a few days. And Fela and Hegen are at the Pellian Embassy helping with some business for a few days. Since you know the Tsukikages moved out of the beach house last summer, that just leaves us."

"When are you going off on the _Argo_, Mommy? When do you finish graduation and quit being a resident fake doctor and become a real doctor with a cat and a bottle of spring water? Mommy, when is daddy coming home? Mommy, why do you have gray gook in your eyes? And mommy, when are you gonna make lunch? And when are ya gonna answer the phone?"

Nova looked at her adopted son Jonathan Hartnell-Wildstar; the third-year EDF Academy Cadet just shrugged and said, "Mom, I think the first order of business is that phone that is ringing."

Nova nodded dully, and quickly pulled on the first thing she could find; a sleep shirt with a cartoon snail on it (Puffy the Snail, as a matter of fact) and she picked up the phone. "Good afternoon, sir. Wildstar residence."

"Were you sleeping, Commander?" said a rough voice through the phone as the image of a bearded doctor came up on the little screen. "Oh boy, Doctor Wildstar, you look like crud warmed over."

"That's the way I feel, Doctor," Nova said as she spoke to Doctor Knapp, her advisor (_more like slave-driver_, she thought) in the surgical/trauma/ship's surgeon residency she had been accepted into at Central Hospital after completing her surgical internship at Central between 2212 and 2213. Nova turned her head and said, "Jonathan, where's Teresa?"

"Mark found her trying to eat something in the yard when he came home from school," said Jonathan.

"What?" said Nova, thinking of Teresa, their youngest daughter, two, just out of diapers, and just being weaned from her mother. She was also a holy terror.

"Doggie poo," said Anya. "My yucky sister eats doggie poo and puts worms on it for dessert! Tra la la la la la _la_!"

"Doctor Wildstar, if you need to, you can bring your children to the hospital and leave them in the day care area. I need you back in here at 2100, Doctor."

"Twenty-one hundred?" Nova sighed. _Nine at night_, she thought. _Great. That gives me seven hours to have a life. Oh, well. Three more weeks to go and I'll be a certified ship's surgeon in June. I remember that deployment they stuck me on last summer before the space wargames when I was both the skipper of the hospital ship _Helena Bruckner _and the alternate ship's surgical resident. Anderson and I went back and forth between the Operating Room and the ship's bridge for that month, until I turned over command to Captain Bramwell and flew over to the _Argo_ again. Then, there was that business with the SMITE unit….I hope they aren't having to use that thing in combat yet._

"Mommy, what are we having for _dinner_?" yelled Anya.

"Anya, is food all you can think of at a time like this? Mommy has to work again, and is worried about Daddy in space," Nova said as her other four-year old son, Stephen, came walking in while taking apart an old alarm clock. "Steve, where are you putting those gears?"

"I'm cataloguing them for future use, Mother," said Steve in a voice that had a funny tone in it; as if he was speaking to someone younger than he was as he looked at his project through his glasses.

Nova nodded and turned back to the screen. "Okay, sir. Twenty-one hundred it is."

"Be there, Wildstar," said Knapp as he cut off.

* * *

**TO BE CONTINUED…..**


End file.
